When vacation season rolls around I prefer self-improvement to be incidental, much like how eating an ice cream cone also happens to be high in calcium. In my experience, time away from school means travel, yet another interlude to leave routine behind and surrender to the currents of chance.
The thought of sitting at a desk in mid-summer always seemed unbearable, until I found a school that served as a slingshot to the unfamiliar. At the Center for Bilingual Multicultural Studies in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where I enrolled in a first-rate Spanish immersion program to kick off a backpacking trip this past July, school is a resort with books.
The language institute was founded in 1980 as an annex of the Universdidad Internacional (Uninter), a fully-accredited university itself, designed for foreign students, business professionals and stray cats of any speaking level to learn Spanish, immersion style, for as little as $200 a week.
With too many study abroad programs tie students down with insular groups and dull cultural itineraries, it was nice to find one without the full commitment. Of course, academic credit is available and you're free to stay for as short -- or as long -- as it takes.
I first heard about the program from an article in The New York Times touting it as one of the premier Spanish schools anywhere in Latin America, a strong endorsement considering there are over 1,000.
Rounding the ivy-dripped walls of the campus, I began to see why. The man at the orientation desk was pleased to see me in spite of my lateness and I was pleased to learn where I'd be spending my mornings for the next three weeks.
Set back in a walled residential district in the north of the city, less than an hour's drive from Mexico City, the scene was akin to stumbling into some pineapple tycoon's tropical hacienda. The beige buildings of the university were airy and micro-sized, hedged by putting greens of grass and exotic bursts of flora and fauna. Although no one was taking a dip, pools were everywhere, the trademark, I later learned, of Cuernavaca's reputation as "the city of eternal spring."
Students from Austin to Amsterdam buzzed around an espresso bar, blowing smoke and clumsily exchanging newly-minted phrases. If it weren't for the bell that summoned everyone back to classes, the vibe was just shy of Club Med. And to think that just two weeks earlier I had resigned myself to a summer session in Charlottesville to knock out a science requirement in oceanography, for more money.
My first week at Uninter began with a Spanish proficiency test that I turned in after signing my name. I had thought, mistakenly, that my repertoire of restaurant Spanglish might give me a slight edge over my fellow beginners, but this was not the case. I would have to work for it, and work we did.
The standard day's activities broke down into five hours of in-class time: the first two hours spent in a small group doing grammar exercises, followed by an hour-long session of vocabulary and verb conjugation drills and still two more hours of grammar exercises.
I was assigned to a motley crew made up of a third-grade teacher from East L.A., a ski-fanatic from Park City, Utah, a Swedish grad student living in D.C. and the ever-patient Tonatieuh Gonzalez, a media programmer from Mexico City moonlighting as our instructor.
Uninter adheres to the group-five system, a policy that ensures no class will exceed five students. This dynamic allows for maximum instructor access, providing a setting where one can comfortably struggle through unfamiliar territory. The results: In a little over one week we learned both the present and past tenses, along with a hefty dose of vocabulary.
The drill sessions in the afternoons with Raul Moreno, one of the school's founding professors, spiced things up thanks to a nasal accent and eyebrows that shot up with irony at the sound of a west Texas twang mangling his beloved language. "Otra Veeeez (Repeat again)!?!"
Afternoons were wide open. Although students have the option of participating in conversational classes after the official school day ends at 2 p.m., I was always raring to get out and put the lessons into practice. Each day after school, I would take a 10-minute uphill walk home -- with a pit stop at the popsicle stand -- and sit down to lunch with my host mother Lupita and her son Miguel for an hour of small talk and hand puppetry.
I had been forewarned that host mothers, included with room and board in the tuition fee, tended to be rather involved. Short and stout with a cherub face, Lupita was a firecracker by nature and an artist by trade who painted my cheeks red with lipstick the first moment I walked through her door. She told me point blank that she was my mother for the duration of my stay and for three weeks did everything possible to make my experience a pleasant one, leaving a cloud of Chanel No. 5 in her wake.
If I didn't need a siesta to relieve overindulgence at the table, I would catch the bus for 3 pesos to the zocalo, the downtown plaza found at the heart of any Mexican city, where people-watching is as addictive as the fruit smoothies and churros that are local favorites. On weekends, there was plenty of time for excursions to sample the silver city of Taxco, the mountain-hippie enclave of Tepoztlan, the excesses of Mexico City and Acapulco or elsewhere.
All the while, Cuernavaca provides just the right balance of provincial charm and urban hustle so as to engage the visitor without making one feel overwhelmed. Afternoons by the square drifted into evenings talking with other students or passing strangers under the murmur of a guitar. Without fail, Mexican warmth naturally lures even the most timid linguist into the kind of bold conversational forays that amount to real progress.
The day before I left the program, I somehow found myself in an advanced discussion group debating the death penalty with only three tenses to my name. Problem was that instead of saying "pena de la muerte" (death penalty), I kept saying "pina de la muerte" (pineapple of death).
After only three weeks at Uninter, I was capable of getting myself into all sorts of conversational trouble, but ill-equipped to get out of it. This suited me fine, as I still had a full month on the road to learn the hard way.
Note: The Center for Bilingual Multicultural Studies at Universidad Internacional is at San Jeronimo 304, Colonia Tlaltenango, Cuernavaca. Mailing address is Apartado Postal 1520, Cuernavaca, Morelos 62000, Mexico; Telephone (800) 932-2068 or (52-7) 317-1087, or online at www.bilingual-center.com. Francophiles who would prefer Left Bank cool to Latin American zest, I recommend the Cours de langue et de civilisation françaises de la Sorbonne, a well-priced program for foreign students of all levels and interests. Mailing address is 47, rue des Ecoles, 75005 Paris, France; Telephone: (33) 01 40 46 22 11, Ext. : 2664 to 2675; Fax: (33) 01 40 46 32 29, or online atwww.fle.fr/sorbonne/ang/intro.html.
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